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Tainter tells a complex story in the style of historical fiction writer James Michener. Wrapped in a shawl of romance and fable, this saga of Robert and the González family unfolds the history, plant medicine, folklore, and politics of the Lonquimay Valley in Chile. The journey begins at least 13,400 years ago when the González ancestors trekked from present-day Montana to what is now the Lonquimay Valley, located in Chile’s Araucanía Region in the northernmost part of Patagonia. Along the way, shooting Clovis point arrows at prey and foe, the Gonzálezes experience what has now become folklore in Chile. In early legend, a gray-garmented stranger bestows the power of the machi (healers) upon them and their descendants. The stranger directs them to the land of the sacred pehuens (evergreen tree), and they become Pehuenche, the People of the Pines, a subculture of the Mapuche (Araucanian) society in Chile today. Tainter makes clear his belief that Pehuenches were a separate cultural and linguistic society before absorption into the Mapuches, and both subsisted on and sold the nutrient-rich pine nuts from the pehuens.
Tainter infuses more strength into the González family by retelling how the Mapuches/Pehuenches repelled the Spanish invasion of Chile in the 1500s and fought the genocide of their indigenous society in the late 1990s under the dictator Pinochet. Tainter emphasizes this group’s historical support of the working class, especially during the socialist Allende regime, despite anti-Allende interference from USA’s Kennedy and Nixon administrations.
Into this powerful family of indigenous shamans, healers, and sheep and cattle ranchers strides Robert, an American in search of medicinal plants for his company, Pharmtec. This is 1973, and Robert is a pioneer in the development of healing floras, of which southern Chile has an abundance.
A self-described gringo, Robert is, without a doubt, Tainter. An emeritus professor of forest pathology from Clemson University, Tainter has published more than 150 scientific articles. He has researched causes of tree diseases in the United States, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador and was an associate editor of the journal Plant Disease. From 1964 through 1966, he served in the Peace Corps at the Forestry Institute in Santiago, Chile. These experiences lend passion to this magical, historical, and fictional tale of shamans, fighters, patriots, and plant spirit medicine workers.
Interspersed with solid slabs of history, the story of Robert’s love for Rosa unfolds in two segments. First, a young Robert befriends Rosa’s parents and saves the life of the mother, Claudia, a powerful machi. Vietnam intervenes, plunging Robert back into the dangerous world of smokejumping, a job he held in civilian life. (Tainter also parachuted into hard-to-reach areas to fight fires.) By splicing together the past and the present in parallel stories that eventually intersect, Tainter creates a hybrid novel that is part historical primer and part love story. The history covers the Arauco War, the colonization and the persecution of the indigenous people by the Chilean government, the construction of what was the longest tunnel in South America in the 1920s, how vineyards came to Chile, the coup of 1973, the fire of 1983, and more. Of course, the González family has ties to these events.
The love story begins when Robert returns to Chile after sustaining disabling war injuries, hence the title’s meaning: ¿Eres tú? (Is it you?). Love unfolds in this mystical, magical town of Lonquimay, braced by the powerful conceit of folklore. Through folktales, Tainter unwraps the Mapuches/Pehuenches’ common history, reinforces their cultural values, and highlights their important traditions. The ethereal Chilean world of guardian ghosts, the secret valley of giant sloths, and miraculous plant remedies that cheat death contrast with Robert’s background in science and genetics. But somehow, like a marriage of opposites, this created domain works.
Line illustrations of plants throughout and a notebook that lists medicinal plants help bring together this world of fact and fiction. For ease of reading, Spanish and Latin words and phrases are printed in italics, and native dialect appears in bold italics. To set the tone, most chapters begin with a title or short verse of music from Chilean folklore. This sweeping saga of the history of Lonquimay, the indigenous Mapuches/Pehuenches, the González family, and the gringo Robert delves deep into plant medicine, folklore, shamanism, and the bloody conflicts that shaped Chile. Adventure, love, history, and genetics swirl delightfully in this love letter to the Lonquimay Valley and the people who shaped it.